Technology is always changing, and so is the business of technology. From the latest innovations to the unicorn of the moment, it can be hard to keep pace with all the fluctuations and transformations.
One thing does not change, however: Tech is an important and growing employment sector, adding 1.5 million jobs since 2010. In fact, tech accounts for almost 10% of all jobs in the US economy, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). And at the heart of it all is Silicon Valley, a place synonymous with start-ups and cutting-edge technologies and home to giants such as Apple and Google.
And this year, growth was the name of the game. In fact, tech job postings in Silicon Valley on Indeed rose by 12.9% between November 2017 and November 2018. This is different from last year, which saw a 5.4% decline of the same type of job postings.
Of course, 2018 saw its share of tech-related headlines, ranging from security concerns to self-driving cars to the latest from the world of start-ups. But what lies in store? To take the pulse of the job market, we analyzed jobs, salaries and companies using Indeed data in the Bay Area to assess the state of the innovation capital of the world.
Here’s what we found.
Engineers and product-related roles in high demand
To identify which roles are the most in demand, we looked at all tech job postings in Silicon Valley and listed the 20 with the biggest share.
Though engineers dominate the list — they make up half of the top 20 — product-related roles account for a further one-quarter of the roles. The job in highest demand this year is software test engineer; this role jumped up from number eight on last year’s list.
The second most in-demand role is senior product manager. This is a crucial role that not only oversees products but serves as the bridge between tech, business and design. An interesting standout is IT security specialist (#12). In this age of serious data and security breaches, companies are moving to bolster their defenses against cyber criminals.
The top skill listed in Bay Area tech job descriptions was Java, with over one in four (27%) tech job postings in the Bay Area seeking it. This was followed by Python (25%) and JavaScript (18%) — further evidence of the high demand for engineers.
Top Silicon Valley tech roles are well paid, but cost of living soars
Silicon Valley is famous for high salaries, but given that the Bay Area is the most expensive place in the country to rent a home, the cost of living is a crucial factor for anyone chasing a tech dream there. That being the case, we wanted to learn about the top-paying jobs in Silicon Valley.
Our analytics team took the average of the posted salaries for tech positions on Indeed to come up with our list of the 20 highest-paid tech jobs.
Methodology: Indeed identified which job titles had the highest salaries by analyzing the salaries listed in job postings for job titles within the technology category on Indeed in the “San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward (CA),San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara (CA)” metros from January 2018 to October 2018.
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